


everything is blank until you draw me

by gutsforgarters



Category: Gossip (2000), The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover Pairings, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Femdom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:42:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23947855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutsforgarters/pseuds/gutsforgarters
Summary: The movies got it all wrong, because there's nothing sexy or intimate about drawing someone nude. At worst, it's awkward as hell, and at best, you don't evennoticethey're naked.That's how Travis used to feel about it, but that was before he met Beth Greene.
Relationships: Beth Greene/Travis (Gossip)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kattyshack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/gifts).



> Maj and I watched this trash movie like a day apart and collectively decided that Travis Deserved Better, and of course "deserved better" translated to "another Beth Greene-centric crackship." You're welcome. 
> 
> Prompt by Maj. Title from "Write on Me" by Fifth Harmony.

Travis is running late, but that’s probably what he gets for staying up till two AM to do shots with Jones at their rickety kitchen table, and even when you factor in the hangover, he still figures it was worth it. Professor Pauley’ll probably be cool about it, at least, ’cause she’s usually pretty laid-back in that way most art teachers are unless you get her started on the erasure of female Renaissance painters from the Western narrative. He’s not sweating it, is the point.

No one looks up from their sketchpads when he ducks into the classroom, either, too intent on today’s anatomical study to give much of a shit about his late ass. He throws the model who’s perched on a stool in the center of the big sunny room a cursory glance—blonde; kinda skinny; he doesn’t recognize her so she must be new—before heading toward the only open easel that’s left. He doesn’t bother to shed his scarf or coat when he sits; just sets up his pad and gets to work.

His suspicions that this girl must be new are confirmed when he sees how she holds herself, like she’s fighting not to fidget between poses. It’s not just that, though; if you’ve been modeling nude long enough, you tend to lose whatever sense of modesty you might’ve had, at least in this context. But this girl’s arms keep twitching like she wants to cross them over her small bare breasts, and she’s always careful to shield her crotch from view whenever she has to switch from one pose to the next, fingers dancing against her palms like she wants to fiddle with the colorful stack of bracelets on her left wrist.

Travis snorts as he flips to a fresh sheet of paper. Yeah, she’s definitely new. If she wasn’t, she’d know that _Titanic_ got it all wrong; there’s nothing sexy or intimate about drawing someone nude. At worst, it’s awkward as shit, and at best, you don’t even _notice_ they’re naked. Hell, one time one of the models gave himself a concussion when he keeled right off his stool in a dead faint ’cause he hadn’t eaten anything since the night before, and then Professor Pauley’d had to call the paramedics. Shit like that’s not exactly worth stowing away in the spank bank, is what he’s saying.

Although…He looks up from the swirl of wavy hair he was sketching in broad, sweeping strokes and squints over the top of his easel, his concentration breaking as the girl’s disparate parts start to fit together into a whole person and not just a study on human anatomy. Yeah, okay. She’s definitely one of the prettier models he’s drawn since he started taking this course. The kind of pretty he usually wouldn’t have the nerve to look at straight-on, except now he has to.

She’s young—really young, maybe a freshman or a sophomore if she even goes to this school—and fine-boned in a way that makes her a dream to draw, long blonde hair pulled back in a tight ponytail so there’s nothing to distract from the curve of her cheek or the delicate angle of her jaw. She’s not fidgeting as much anymore, but there’s still some tension in her arms—and, fuck him, those are some nice arms—the muscles in her long lean thighs bunching distractingly when she uncrosses and re-crosses her legs.

Travis swallows convulsively, palms slicking with sweat. Shit, shit, _shit_ , he _does_ not need to go sprouting a boner in the middle of class. Sure, as far as the sliding scale of humiliation goes, it wouldn’t be as bad as one of the models getting a hard-on—and that’s happened before—but it sure as hell _would_ make him a fucking perv.

And it’s like God or Whoever has it out for him in particular today, because as if the situation in his pants wasn’t harrowing enough, _now_ the girl’s gotta go and face front—which is weird, ’cause Travis didn’t hear the timer going off to signal for her to switch poses. But that’s what she’s doing; she’s facing front, and she’s looking right at him.

Travis almost drops his charcoal stick, flushing so hot his face feels like it’s been sunburned. Fuck. _Fuck_. She’s fucking _caught him_ ogling her like the headliner at a topless bar, and now he’s gotta drop this class ’cause no way in hell will he ever be able to face her again, but—

But then she blinks, long pale lashes fluttering against the seashell curves of her cheekbones, and her pastel pink lips curl into a very small, very shy smile.

Her eyes are big and blue and bottomless as a clear lake, and if he wasn’t sweating earlier, he definitely is now.

Maybe he should’ve taken his coat off, after all.

“ _Hey_.” Travis jumps when a voice hisses right up against his ear, then drops his charcoal for real when the owner of that voice pokes him hard in the ribs. “Earth to perv. I know the point of all this is to look at the models, but you’re supposed to be drawing her, not eyefucking her.”

Travis fumbles for his charcoal—at least it didn’t break in half, because he can’t afford to buy new supplies right now—and then sits up straight to scowl at Sheila, who he didn’t even notice was sitting right next to him. She doesn’t say anything else, just sticks out her chin and arches her eyebrows like she can’t wait to hear what kind of explanation he comes up with.

But he _can’t_ come up with any explanation that wouldn’t make him sound guilty as hell—because he _is_ that—and Sheila probably knows it, too. So he evades the question instead, even though he knows that Sheila won’t buy that for a second, either.

“Dunno what you’re talking about,” he mumbles, adding some strokes to the model’s ponytail just to keep his eyes and hands busy. He can’t resist the temptation to throw her another look, though, to see if she’s still looking at _him_ —and he’s supposed to be looking at her anyway, right?—only for his stomach to twist itself into a knot of disappointment when he finds that she’s staring off to one side again like she never looked his way at all.

Maybe she didn’t. Maybe he’s still drunk and he hallucinated that shit. It’s a lot more likely than a girl like that looking his way, at least.

“Sure you don’t,” Sheila drawls, head bent over her own sketchpad even as she continues to give him shit. “But I gotta say, DiCaprio, it’s pretty goddamn cliché of you to want to fuck the models.”

Travis’s fingers clench so hard they nearly snap his charcoal in half, because Sheila’s got it all wrong. He doesn’t want to fuck the models. He wants, he realizes as something deep in his gut gives an insistent tug, to fuck one model in particular. He wants to mark up those acres of pale skin with his mouth, to bury his hands wrist-deep in all that hair. He wants to spread those strong thighs and lick between them like he knows what he’s doing—which he doesn’t.

Jesus, he just _wants_.

“Y’know,” Sheila goes on, and Travis can’t help but hear what she’s saying even though he’s trying like hell to tune her out, “I guess it wouldn’t be _that_ creepy of you to ask for her number so long as you waited for her to get dressed first. I mean, she did smile at you.”

Travis’s hand jerks and cuts an ugly black line through the shading he was doing on the girl’s cheek. He swears under his breath and flips to a fresh sheet, fingers gone all thick and clumsy, heart pulsing in his ears because he _didn’t_ imagine it. She really did smile at him.

He turns to Sheila to ask her if she’s sure, that she’s not just fucking with him, but before he can say anything, _she_ says, “Granted, it’s possible she was just being polite. It’s kind of a knee-jerk thing, y’know?”

No, Travis _doesn’t_ know. “What?”

“Oh, y’know.” Sheila swirls her hand around vaguely, then tucks a loose piece of hair behind her ear, tracking smudges of charcoal across her cheek like Travis’s ruined sketch. “Creepy guy on the bus won’t stop staring at you, so you smile at him in a way that tries to convey, ‘I’m definitely not encouraging you to strike up a conversation with me, but please don’t shiv me in a back alley, either.’ It’s a really fine line.”

Travis’s ears grow hot, and he hunches over his sketchpad so he doesn’t have to look at the smirk on Sheila’s face. Christ, he really is pathetic. He can already tell that this girl’s uncomfortable enough as it is; she doesn’t need him ogling her thighs like they just got served up to him on a silver platter, too.

“Jesus,” Sheila sighs, all longsuffering like _he’s_ the one who’s being a pain in _her_ ass. “Put the kicked puppy eyes away, would you? I was just kidding.”

Travis doesn’t say anything. Just gives her a deeply suspicious look as he tries to curb stomp the resurgence of hope that’s tickling under his breastbone.

“Well.” Sheila cocks her head thoughtfully. “I _was_ serious about the creepy guy on the bus thing. It happens. Like, all the time.” Then she smiles a little and says in the nicest tone of voice he’s ever heard her use, at least while talking to him, “I mean, I can’t really speak for somebody I don’t know, but she didn’t _look_ like you were giving her the heebie jeebies. I say go for it. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Is she serious right now? Just in case she is, Travis condescends to enlighten her. “Uh, are you for fucking real? She could shoot me down, and then I’d never be able to show my face around here again— _that’s_ the worst that could happen.”

Sheila rolls her eyes and scoffs. “Christ, Travis, don’t be so melodramatic.”

Considering the shit he’s been through in the past year, he thinks he’s entitled to a little melodrama. But Pauley’s doing a sweep around the classroom now to make sure they’re all on task, and even though she _is_ a generally laid-back teacher, Travis still doesn’t wanna piss her off, especially when he’s nursing a hangover that could seriously use some hair of the dog. So he finally sheds his coat and scarf and hunches over his sketchpad, trying not to look at the blonde girl for too long a stretch at a time as he works.

He probably doesn’t succeed, but at least he doesn’t get caught staring again, and, honestly, that’s the most he could hope for at this point.

Well, not _all_ he could hope for—he’d like to chill the fuck out a little, too, but that’s not happening, and as for the rest of it, he _knows_ it’s not happening no matter what kinds of ideas Sheila went and put into his too-busy head. And he doesn’t chill out, no, not for a single goddamn second, but eventually he’s able to lose himself in drawing her, in perfecting the arch of her foot and the shading on her bracelets, and there’s no ignoring the way his stomach sinks when Professor Pauley calls the class to a close and he has to pack up his things and stop drawing her.

Will she be back next week? Travis hopes so, and not just because she’s so pretty. He _likes_ drawing her, and there’s more to that than her good bone structure and muscular thighs. There’s something in her eyes, in her smile when she looked at him, that made him feel like she was something special.

And, yeah, okay. Maybe he’s been leafing through too many of Naomi’s romance novels, but for all that it sounds corny as shit even in the privacy of his own head, he doesn’t think he’s wrong about this girl. No, he doesn’t think he’s wrong at all.

He stoops to shove his things into his bag, anyway, trying not to notice when the girl slips on her robe and goes padding over to the folding screen set up in the back corner of the room so she can get dressed in privacy. Sheila said it wouldn’t be super weird of him to ask for her number if she was dressed while he did it, but wouldn’t it _also_ be weird of him to wait around for her to put her clothes on? He’s pretty sure it would be.

He turns to ask Sheila what she thinks, even though she’ll almost definitely give him more shit for it, but she’s already gone and joined the stampede that’s heading toward the exit, on their way to nap or study or make it to their next class before they’re late like he was.

Shit.

He hitches his bag over his shoulder and looks toward the folding screen like he’s got magnets in his eyes and that girl’s the north point of a compass. Her silhouette stands out sharp and clear through the screen as she bends over to drag what looks like her underwear up her long legs, and, yeah, nope. Something about watching her do that makes him feel even pervier than ogling her naked thighs, so he points his eyes front and gets the hell out of Dodge, mumbling a goodbye to Professor Pauley as he goes.

And he _definitely_ doesn’t stop to ask her the girl’s name.

He’s got a break after this, and he could use the free hour to go get something to eat at the bistro, but he loiters in the hallway instead, propping his shoulders against the wall and gnawing his thumbnail down to the quick. He already decided that waiting around for a girl whose name he doesn’t even know would be creepy as shit, and yet here he is, loitering outside the classroom like some peeping tom on a fire escape, heart jumping into his throat every time he spots a flash of blonde in the corner of his eye. None of them are her, though, and he’s just started to drag his feet down the hallway when he hears a voice that just about makes his heart fucking _stop_.

“Um, hey. Sorry to bother you, but did you drop this?”

It’s her. He knows it’s her even before he turns around to look. It’s _gotta_ be her, because that’s the exact kind of voice he’d expect a girl like that to have.

And, yeah, it _is_ her, and she’s smiling at him again, and he’s so caught up in the things that smile does to her face that he doesn’t even notice his scarf wound around her hands until she holds it out to him.

“It is yours, right? It was on the floor next to your easel, so…”

She remembered which easel he was sitting at? Travis tries not to read too much into that even as his heart sticks against the walls of his throat. It’s not like she had much else to do in there but observe her surroundings, and she _had_ met his eyes. Yeah, it probably doesn’t mean anything.

Her smile turns a little puzzled, like she doesn’t understand why it’s taking him so long to answer her, so he fumbles to fill the silence before it can turn (more) awkward, fumbling for his scarf, too.

“Uh, yeah.” He tugs the scarf out of her loose grip, and it slithers across her palms, the wool warm from her touch so it’s almost like touching her skin. Which, Jesus, he doesn’t need to be thinking about when he’s trying to form a coherent sentence. “Yeah, uh, it’s—it’s mine.” Well, of course it is, dumbass. Why else would he be taking it from her? “Uh, obviously. Thanks.”

“No problem,” she says, sticking her hands in her jeans’ pockets. There’s a tiny hole in the left one, and he can see it distend as she prods her finger against it and makes it worse. Her smile turns a little self-deprecating, and he has no idea why— _she_ has no reason to feel like a jackass. “Guess it’s kinda weird, huh?”

He didn’t notice at first, because her accent’s kinda light, but she actually sounds like she’s from down south someplace. It’s really pretty, like the rest of her. “What’s weird?”

“Oh, um.” Her cheeks already had a kind of natural glow to them, but now they flush an even deeper pink, and it makes him want to draw her in pastels or pull out his camera and capture her blush with film. She pokes at the hole in her jeans some more. “Seein’ me with my clothes on, I guess.”

She laughs a little nervously when she says it, and it’s just as pretty as her voice. Travis wonders if she’s a singer or something, because someone who talks this pretty’s gotta sing pretty too, right?

But then he thinks about what she said, and not just how pretty she sounded saying it, and he feels himself flush, too. He coughs, hunches his shoulders. Fiddles with his scarf and half-seriously considers strangling himself with it, because the chances of the earth just opening up and swallowing him probably aren’t as good as he’d like.

“Listen, uh. You don’t have to be embarrassed or whatever.” He twists the fringe on his scarf around his finger, winds it tight enough to cut off the blood flow. He really wants to go for his pack of cigarettes, but he doesn’t wanna get expelled for smoking inside a building, and he doesn’t know if it’d gross her out, either. “It’s not like—it’s not like _Titanic_ , alright? It’s just anatomy practice. Nobody’s gonna, I dunno, _ogle_ you or anything, and if they did, Pauley’d kick their asses.”

It’s not entirely true, the thing about nobody ogling her, ’cause _he_ already has, even if he didn’t mean to, but at least it makes her laugh again, some of the anxiety draining from her big blue eyes.

“Yeah?” she asks, laughter still catching at the corners of her lips in a way that makes him want to follow up on his earlier impulse snap a photo of her just like this—except that’d be weird, right? That’s not the same as drawing her for an assignment.

He can’t really feel his finger anymore, so he disentangles it from his scarf’s fringe before it falls off for real. What were they talking about again?

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. She’s usually pretty chill, but she can be kinda scary when you piss her off, y’know?”

“I wouldn’t know; this was my first day. But you, uh. You probably figured that out already, huh?”

“Yeah, I—I definitely would’ve recognized you.” Ah, fuck. Way to sound like a creep. He opens his mouth to backpedal, but she doesn’t look pissed or weirded out. No, she’s smiling at him the way she had back in the classroom, all shy and uncertain but warm, too.

“Actually, I. I meant you could probably tell because I wasn’t very good at it.”

“You were,” he says, and when she looks doubtful, he says it again, because he means it, and because he doesn’t want her quitting and going away. “For real. Everybody fidgets a lot at first, but holding still just takes practice. You just gotta give it some time.”

She’s smiling again. That means he said the right thing, doesn’t it? Or maybe she’s just humoring him. “Yeah?”

Travis looks down, measuring the distance between the toes of their shoes. He kind of wants to take a picture of their feet, too, but not in a creepy Quentin Tarantino sorta way. She’s wearing boots like him, and they’re scuffed like his, only they’re cowgirl boots instead of knockoff Doc Martens. Similar, but different.

“Uh-huh,” he says, still looking at their boots.

“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing I’m comin’ back next week, isn’t it?”

 _That_ gets him to look up, so fast it almost gives him whiplash, and at least puts a crick in his neck.

“That’s good,” he says, way to overeager, and he clears his throat, tries to backtrack. “I mean, uh. You’re a good subject, y’know? You’ve got, um.” He gestures at his face. “Good bone structure.”

Her lips pull apart into a grin, flashing teeth. “Thanks. My orthodontist thought so, too.” She squeezes her backpack’s straps, bounces on her toes like she’s trying to adjust its weight. “What’s your name?”

Wait, what? “Huh?”

She presses her lips together like she’s trying not to laugh, hiding the teeth she flashed. “I mean, you have seen me naked. I figure I should know your name, at least.”

If he blushes any harder, his skin’s just gonna sear right the fuck off. “Travis.”

“Hi, Travis.” She sticks out her hand, and Travis looks at like he’s never seen one before. And, to be fair, this probably is his first time seeing one as pretty as hers. “I’m Beth.”

Beth. Of course it’s Beth. He can’t imagine her being called anything else. He hesitates, then wraps his fingers around hers, their palms nestling together, his thumb hooking around the back of her hand. She doesn’t shake, though, and neither does he. They just stand there for a second, hands clasped, her body heat seeping into his skin like it had his scarf.

She’s really warm, probably from sitting in the sun for so long. He wants to know if the rest of her’s this warm, and not in a pervy kind of way. He just wants to soak her up the way she soaked up the sunlight, like maybe just being near her would be enough to settle the thoughts in his head that never want to stop spinning.

She lets go first, which is probably for the best, because he doesn’t think he could’ve done it himself. She skates her thumb across the palm that touched his, and then she sticks both hands in her pockets and shuffles her feet like she’s ready to get going.

“So, um.” She tilts her head to one side. “I’ll see you next Friday?”

 _Don’t read into it, don’t read into it._ “Yeah,” he says, and even manages to sound mostly normal when he says it. “Yeah, for sure.”

“Okay.” She starts walking backwards like she’s not ready to look away from him just yet, except that can’t be right. “Um. Bye.”

“Bye,” he echoes. Beth waves at him, then spins on her heel and heads off down the corridor, ponytail bobbing.

Travis stares after her, heart thrumming in his ears and in his throat, fingers itching for a pencil.

He already knows that he’s gonna try drawing her from memory.

* * *

Travis hasn’t said anything to Jones about Beth, even though he kind of wants to, and even though he can tell that _she_ can tell that something’s up with him. He’ll probably say something to her eventually, ’cause he needs some advice on how to pursue this thing—and it _feels_ like a Thing, at least on his end—from someone who’s not Sheila.

Case in point.

“Putting your stuff away extra slow so you have an excuse to stick around after class without looking too creepy about it. Kind of transparent, but I’ll give you points for going with a proven classic.”

Travis almost drops his sketchpad on his foot. Not as bad as dropping his _camera_ on his foot—which has happened before, and he was always more concerned about breaking the lens than breaking his toes—but it’s, like, the _principle_ of the thing.

He sticks his sketchpad in his bag at a _totally normal speed_ , not lingering _at all_ , and then rounds on Sheila, who’s loitering by his easel. He didn’t sit next to her today—kind of went out of his way to avoid it, actually—and she’s never sought him out _before_ , but it just figures that this, whatever _this_ is, would be what it’d take for her to want to talk to him.

He remembers thinking Sheila was cute, once. Not so much anymore, and not just because he’s only got eyes for a girl he barely knows.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” he asks her. _Literally_ anywhere else. Even if she doesn’t have a class coming up, Sheila has a fairly robust social life, unlike him.

“Andrea’ll let me look at her notes.” So she does have class, Travis thinks, and then immediately goes on (even more of) the defensive when Sheila grins wide enough to show off most of her teeth. “And I wouldn’t wanna miss this.”

He doesn’t have to ask what she means by _this_. He glances in the direction of the folding screen, completely reflexive, then whips back around to face front when he hears Sheila laugh.

“Christ, you’re a freak,” he mumbles, but Sheila just laughs again. He’s glad someone’s amused, anyway, except, no. He really isn’t.

“Takes one to know one,” she sing-songs, but then relents with a shrug, like he’s putting her out or something. “Jesus, fine. I’ll give you and your girlfriend a little privacy. Don’t say I never did anything for you, Trav.”

“Don’t call me that,” he says automatically, but Sheila just wiggles her fingers and swans off out the door, ponytail bobbing with each step. Seeing that just makes him think of _Beth’s_ ponytail and the embarrassing number of times he’s drawn it since last week, and his hand clenches around nothing, itching to sketch out those loose, messy waves.

He’s resigned himself to the fact that he’s probably never gonna get her out of his system.

“Hey, Travis.”

Travis doesn’t wanna say that he _jumps_ , but. Yeah. That’s kind of what he does.

It’s definitely what he does, because Beth’s forehead is all scrunched up with confusion when he swivels around to face her. She dances her fingers up and down her backpack’s turquoise straps, and he wishes he could photograph her doing it.

“Um.” Nice one, asshole. You’re a goddamn sparkling conversationalist. “Hey? What’s up.”

Beth’s lips tremble like she’s trying not to laugh. At least she thinks he’s funny, but it’s not ’cause of anything he did on _purpose_ , so it probably doesn’t count.

“Hey,” she echoes. “It’s nice to see you again. I guess you can tell I didn’t quit. Obviously.”

Nice…to…see him? Wait. What else did she say?

Right. Right, okay.

“Nice to see you too,” he blurts, and, yeah, there go her lips again. He should probably stop staring at them. “I’m—I’m glad you didn’t quit. I like. I like drawing you.”

Shit. He really hopes that didn’t sound as creepy to her as it did to him. Beth doesn’t _look_ creeped out, at least, but maybe it’s like Sheila said. Maybe she’s just good at pretending she isn’t so she doesn’t get shivved in a back alley, _Christ_.

“Thanks.” Is she blushing, or is she just a little sunburned from sitting in front of those big windows for so long? He’s pretty sure she wasn’t this pink a minute ago. “No one’s ever told me that before. But, uh.” She does laugh this time, but Travis gets the feeling that she’s laughing at _herself_ , not him. “I guess no one ever had a reason to. Um.”

Travis just nods and scratches the nape of his neck, tongue curling back on itself as he tries to articulate what he wants to say, which is that he doesn’t understand why no one _would have_ drawn her before, and that _he’ll_ draw her all she wants. If she wants. _Does_ she want?

Fuck, this is stressing him out.

“Hey, uh. Beth?”

Beth’s smile brightens, which leaves him feeling a little bit like someone just pointed a flashlight in his face. “Yeah?”

 _Can I draw you?_ C’mon, asshole, just say it. It’s just one question, four words. The worst that could happen is that she’d say no, but that wouldn’t be the end of the world. It’d be embarrassing as hell, not to mention disappointing, but he’d move on from it eventually. Probably. Maybe.

“D’you go to school here?”

Beth blinks, the smile slipping off her face like that wasn’t the question she expected him to ask. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say she looks…disappointed?

But, nah. Can’t be.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I do.” She snaps her bracelet against her wrist, and he doesn’t know her well enough to make any inferences here, but it seems like a nervous habit. But what’s she nervous _about_? “I’m a sophomore.”

So like he figured. “That’s…cool.” Jesus Christ, _what_? Is he fucking stupid?

Well, yeah. Obviously.

Beth glances over his shoulder. At the clock, he realizes. “So I’ll be seeing you?”

Unfortunately for her, probably. “Yeah. Yeah, guess you will.”

She smiles, and it’s not as bright as it was a second ago, but it is soft. Kind. Like she knows he’s a fucking mess but isn’t gonna make fun of him for it, because that’s just not who she is. He doesn’t know shit about her, but he can figure out that much.

She’s a good person.

“Okay,” she says quietly. He startles when he feels something butt up against his wrist and looks down just in time to see her withdrawing her hand. “It was nice talking to you again.”

“You too,” he mumbles, but she’s already leaving.

He watches her go, then casts a furtive look around—Professor Pauley left for her office a while ago, but he’s just making _sure_ —before pulling his sketchpad out of his bag and whapping himself on the forehead with it.

* * *

Sheila doesn’t bug him much on the following Friday, like she’s getting bored or something, but Jones is waiting for him outside the classroom, which is almost as bad. Actually, in some ways, it’s probably worse, ’cause Sheila’s mostly just talking out of her ass to get a rise out of him, but Jones _knows_ him. If she sees the way he looks at Beth, it’ll be game over, man.

“What’re you doing here?”

Jones arches her eyebrows and adjusts her hold on her stack of textbooks. “What, no hi?”

“Hi,” he says. “Why aren’t you in the library?”

Jones’s eyebrows have officially disappeared beneath her bangs. “Since when are you this invested in my study habits?”

Oh, great. Beth hasn’t even walked out of the classroom yet, and Jones already knows something’s up. He chews on his thumbnail, tries to deflect. “I dunno. Since when do _you_ skip a study session?”

Jones’s eyebrows reappear when she frowns. “I was just gonna ask if you wanted to grab something to eat, Jesus. Did I do something to piss you off or what?”

And now he feels like a dick. “Nah, I—you didn’t do anything.”

“So what’s the problem?”

What’s the problem? _He’s_ the problem. He’s the one who can’t get his shit together long enough to ask a girl if he can draw her outside of class—it’s not like he’s trying to ask her out on a date, although, yeah, he wants to do that too. Even he should be able to handle this much.

He’s still trying to decide how much to tell Jones when a streak of blonde hair catches his eye, and he can’t help himself, even though he knows Jones’ll have his number the second he looks directly at Beth. He turns his head and meets her eyes, and she smiles and waves. At him.

Dazedly, he pulls his thumbnail from his mouth and waves back.

“Huh.” Jones’s voice snaps him out of it, and when he finally drags his eyes away from Beth, he finds her looking contemplative. That’s not good. “Is _that_ what’s been bugging you?”

Travis’s ears heat up. He can’t tell if Beth’s still looking at him or not. “She’s not a _that_. She’s Beth.”

“ _Beth_ , huh?” Travis isn’t looking Jones in the face anymore, but he can tell she’s smiling just from listening to her. “Pretty name. Cute girl.”

“Uh-huh,” Travis says, even though _cute_ doesn’t really cover it. Like, she _is_ that. But she’s also a hell of a lot _more._

“You thinking about making a move?”

Travis looks at Jones like she just spoke Klingon. “I don’t _have_ any moves. And it’s not—it’s not like that.”

Jones’s eyebrows pull another disappearing act. “Oh, it’s not?”

Yeah, so that was bullshit. He tries another tack. “She’s just—she’s just an art model for our class.”

Jones’s grin is both toothy and unsettling. “A _nude_ model?”

Oh, for Christ’s sake. Travis nudges her in the ribs. “Shut up. I was just gonna. I wanted to ask her if I could draw her outside of class, I guess.”

“What, like in _Titanic_?”

Travis is getting sick of hearing and thinking about _Titanic_. He doesn’t even _like_ that movie, or the stupid fucking Celine Dion song that was _everywhere_ a couple years back. “No. Jesus. That’d be fucking creepy.”

“Just a little.” Jones’s eyes flick to one side, and Travis _refuses_ to follow her line of sight. “She’s still there, y’know. If you’re gonna ask her, now would be the time, wouldn’t it?”

Travis abruptly breaks into a cold sweat. “I. I dunno.”

Jones sucks her lower lip into her mouth and nods thoughtfully, like she’s agreeing with him—only for her expression to turn devious when she says, “If you don’t go over there and ask her, I’ll do it for you.”

As if the sweats weren’t bad enough, now his stomach feels like it’s full of ice water.

“You wouldn’t,” he says, knowing full well that she _would_.

“Try me,” she sing-songs.

Fuck. Talk about your rock and a hard place.

He hunches his shoulders and looks furtively to his left. Beth’s leaning against the wall and flipping through what looks like a notebook, possibly doing some last-minute studying for her next class. Her ponytail trails down one shoulder, sparking in the sun that comes in through the windows on the other side of the hallway.

Travis crosses himself, and Jones grins at him because she _knows_ she’s won.

“Good luck,” she says, and instead of flipping her off like she deserves, Travis just nods and gets moving.

“Hey,” he says, and Beth looks up from her notebook with another one of those blinding smiles. She tucks it into her backpack where it’s sitting at her feet, then straightens back up, still smiling.

“Hey,” she says. Rolls her shoulders. “God, I don’t understand how people can do this long term. Aren’t they worried about back problems?”

“Guess they figure it’s worth the spare cash,” he says, and Beth nods like she gets that. She probably does, because no way is she doing this just for the hell of it. “Hey, uh. Could I ask you something?”

Beth tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “Sure.”

Shit, here goes.

“Would you, uh. Could I—” Fuck, fuck, fuck. He wants to screw his eyes shut, ’cause he can’t say this stuff and look her in the face at the same time, but that’d probably make him look like even more of a weirdo. “Could I draw you sometime?”

There. He said it. Kind of rushed it out though, so maybe she didn’t understand him, except—

“You draw me all the time.”

She’s got a politely puzzled look on her face. That’s better than the alternative, isn’t it? Except now he’s gotta _explain_ himself, and he’s never been really good at that.

“I didn’t—I meant outside of class. Not for a grade or anything. Just. Just because.”

“Oh.” Beth’s cheeks turn pink. She fiddles with her bracelets. “Can I ask why?”

He’s really, really starting to regret asking. Jones was probably just messing with him, anyway. He should’ve just left well enough alone, Jesus.

“’Cause I. ’Cause I like drawing you. I said that before, right?”

Her puzzled smile softens. “Yeah. Guess you did.” But then that softened smile turns kinda wry. “If I said yes, I assume I’d be keeping my clothes on?”

God, just strike him dead now. “Uh, yeah.” He coughs, looks away. “Yeah, I mean, obviously.”

“Okay.”

 _Okay_ as in she’s acknowledging what he just said, or _okay_ as in she’s agreeing to what he asked? He looks at her again, even though that’s probably a bad idea, but she’s not looking back. She’s ducking down to pull her notebook out of her bag, scrawling something across a blank page before tearing it out and handing it to him.

Their fingers brush when he takes it from her, and his hand’s still tingling when he reads what she wrote.

Her name, and a phone number.

“I gotta get to class, but you should call me later. So we can, y’know. Work out the details.”

Travis holds the paper tightly, heart slamming in his throat. Should he offer to pay her for her time? Except he’s kind of strapped for cash, the way he always is now that Derrick’s gone, and that might make this even weirder, anyway.

“Uh, sure. Yeah. ’Course.”

“Okay.” Beth’s nose scrunches up when she smiles. She’s got freckles there, and on her shoulders. “Talk to you later?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah.”

Beth waves goodbye, but she turns around before he can get a chance to wave back. His fingers have gonna kinda numb around the piece of paper with her name and number on it.

He looks at it again.

 _Beth Greene_. Her last name’s Greene.

He looks up. Looks around. Catches Jones’s eye.

She gives him a thumbs up.


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey.” Jones pokes her head into Travis’s room and raps her knuckles against the doorframe. “I’m gonna be heading out in a little bit. You want me to pick anything up while I’m gone?”

_Heading out_? Travis fumbles the short stack of polaroids he was thumbing through, and they spill out of his hands and across his desk in a glossy tide of cool shadows and bright colors, a collection of transient moments immortalized on film. The ink’s still wet, and he should probably be more worried about smudging them than he is, but Jones is looking at him like maybe he could use a tranquilizer dart to the neck, and his top priority in this moment is playing it cool.

Yeah. As if he’s ever been any good at _that_.

“Feeling a little jumpy there?” Jones asks. The tips of Travis’s ears start to burn.

“Yeah, I’m. I’m good. Drank too much coffee, I guess.” He occupies himself with sorting his polaroids into a neat stack so he doesn’t have to look Jones in the eye when he asks, “Heading out, huh? Where to?”

In his peripheral vision, he sees Jones cross her arms and lean a shoulder against the doorframe, hip popped out.

“Naomi needs help studying for an exam,” she says. Travis snorts.

“You should start charging her,” he mumbles, and Jones laughs, bright and full throated.

“Nah. You know how brutal Goodwin’s tests can be. I’d feel like a real asshole if I just let her crash and burn.”

Privately, Travis thinks that there’s more to it than that. But if this is Jones’s way of, what, _atoning_ for the Derrick shit, then, well, who the hell is he to question it? It’s not like he doesn’t still feel bad about it, too; he’s pretty sure that this is the kind of thing you never feel better about.

“I think she’d feel pretty insulted by the suggestion that she wouldn’t stand a chance in hell without your help,” he points out, but Jones just shrugs.

His stack of polaroids couldn’t get any neater if he used a ruler on them, so he gives up on any pretense of looking busy and swivels in his desk chair to face Jones properly—or as properly as he can without making eye contact.

“D’you, uh.” He scratches the underside of his chin. “You gotta do it right now? You can’t reschedule or anything?”

Jones stands up straight and shifts from foot to foot like she’s antsy to get going. “I mean, we could. By why not do it now while we’re both free?”

Yeah, that’s a fair point. Real logical and shit. Travis scuffs his boot against the floor and swivels from side to side in his chair.

“It’s just, uh.” Fuck, it’s usually easier to talk to Jones than this. But he’s not talking to her about just _anything_ , is he? “You don’t have to, like, get out of the way or anything just ’cause Beth’s coming over. It’s not like, y’know—”

“You’ll be putting a sock on the door?” Jones finishes for him. And that’s not _exactly_ what he was going to say, but, yeah. Same sentiment.

“I mean,” Travis mumbles. The heat in his ears has traveled to the rest of his face. “It’s not a date or anything. She’s just letting me draw her. That’s all.”

“Uh-huh,” says Jones. She sounds like she’s humoring him. “Well, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’d rather play it safe. You never know, y’know?”

Travis _does_ know, is the thing, and he’s got the record to show for it. But short of making a fool of himself by pleading with Jones to stay and give him a safety net, he’s fresh out of ways to keep her here.

So that’s that, he guesses.

“You’ll be fine,” Jones tells him, sounding way, way, _way_ more confident than he feels. “Really.”

Travis just grunts and keeps on swiveling back and forth in his chair. He’s starting to get a little dizzy, actually, but it’s not enough to make him stop. He needs to keep moving _somehow_ or he’ll vibrate right out of his skin.

“Sure you don’t want anything? Beer? Photo paper? Condoms?”

Jones is the worst person on the planet, actually. “Jesus, just leave.”

She snickers, but she ducks out of the room before Travis can throw something at her. He hears her footsteps echoing through their cramped apartment, and then the sound of the front door squealing open and thudding shut.

And that’s it. Now it's just him and his racing thoughts, with no one else around to keep him distracted while he waits for Beth to show up.

_If_ she shows up. He doesn’t think she’s the kind of person who’d just cancel on someone without bothering to say anything first, but tell _that_ to the part of his brain that refuses to be reasoned with. He wouldn’t blame her, either, if she decided not to come. For all she knows, he’s a fucking serial killer who keeps a collection of saran-wrapped human trophies in his freezer.

Maybe he’s been watching too many Friday night slasher flicks.

Travis scrubs his hands down his face and blows out a breath. Jesus. _Jesus_. He has _got_ to find some Zen if he doesn’t wanna psych himself up into being the one who cancels here, because he knows for a fucking fact that he’d never forgive himself if he did.

It’s just as well, he supposes, that he doesn’t really get a _chance_ to psych himself up, because he’s still waffling over whether or not to dial Beth’s number and ask if they can reschedule when someone knocks on the door. Like he said, it’s a small apartment—you could probably fit twenty of it into Derrick’s old loft, and that’s being generous, honestly—so he doesn’t have any trouble hearing it. Kinda jumps, actually, so his desk chair’s spinny little wheels send him reeling straight into the wall.

_Shit_ , that hurts.

He’s still rubbing his sore shoulder when he shuffles up to the front door. At first, he figures that maybe Jones forgot her keys or something, but when he looks through the peephole, he’s confronted by the sight of someone who’s very much Not Jones. This person’s too short and too blonde. Too…too _everything_.

Okay. Okay, so she’s early. He can deal.

He’s gonna _have_ to deal, so help him God.

Travis doesn’t exactly send up a prayer on the heels of that thought—he’s too lapsed to actually think that it’ll do him any good—but he does cross himself, mostly out of habit, before undoing the locks and pulling open the door to greet Beth’s sunny smile with a tentative one of his own.

“Hey,” he says. Doesn’t even sound like a total dumbass, either. Go, team.

“Hi,” says Beth, but then her bright smile dims a little, and Travis’s heart immediately sinks into his stomach because, shit, what the hell did he do now? “Can I—is it alright if I come in?”

Oh. Right. Duh. Travis practically trips over himself to get out of her way, then reaches over her shoulder to push the door shut. The ends of her ponytail graze his forearm and give him a shivery little jolt, and since his sleeves are rolled up, there wouldn’t be any hiding the resultant goosebumps if she happened to look. He crosses his arms and backs up a step—too fast, going by Beth’s curious little frown.

She’s barely two feet in the door and he’s already acting like a fucking spaz. Goddammit, why’d Jones have to bail out on him? He knows she thinks she was doing him a favor, but if she genuinely believes that he can get through this afternoon without fucking up, then she has _seriously_ overestimated him.

He clears his throat. “You want a snack or something? It’s my turn to do the grocery shopping but I haven’t gotten around to it, so there’s not much. But. Yeah.”

“That’s okay; I had something to eat on the way here. Thanks, though.” Beth shrugs off her backpack but doesn’t set it down. “There someplace I can put this?”

Oh, yeah. She probably wants to take her coat off, too. “Yeah, just dump it wherever.”

There’s that little frown again, cutting two thin lines between her eyebrows. Travis wants to smooth them away with his thumb, but that’d be totally out of bounds.

“Really?” she says doubtfully, and, yeah. She’s from down south, right? Her good southern manners are probably revolting against the idea of just throwing her shit wherever.

It’s cute, but a lot of things about her are. Hell, _everything_ is.

“Yeah, it’s fine.” He turns around before she can ask him why he’s smiling—he just can’t help it around her, okay?—and gestures for her to follow. “C’mon.”

He hears the muted thud of her backpack hitting the floor, and then the even quieter slither of her shrugging her coat off her shoulders. He doesn’t stop and wait, not because he’s being rude, but because it’s not like she has to sprint to catch up with him. She’s already right behind him by the time he makes it to what passes for their living room.

“So, um.” He turns to face her when she talks; she’s tucking some loose wisps of hair behind her ears. “You got any roommates?”

Is she just making conversation, or does she really want to know? Why does she wanna know? Does she not want to be alone with him?

…Does she _want_ to be alone with him?

Jesus, he’s making himself dizzy. Again. “Uh, yeah. Just one. Jones. But she’s off helping a friend study for a test.”

“Jones?”

Travis’s lips twitch. “Cathy. But don’t call her that to her face, alright? She hates that shit.”

Beth smiles tentatively. “I dunno why. It’s a pretty name.” She swipes her tongue across her lower lip, and Travis tries really, really hard not to watch her do it. That’d be creepy—and would raise his body temperature too high for comfort, besides. “So, uh. Are you guys—?”

“We’re not dating or anything,” Travis blurts, and immediately regrets it when Beth gives him wide eyes. Shit, shit, why does he even think she’d care? That’s probably not even where she was going with that. But, hell. He’s already got the shovel. Might as well dig himself deeper. “Or, uh. Anything else. We’re not. Nah. It’s not like that.”

Because, yeah, Jones is pretty—gorgeous, really, in a classical, doe-eyed way that makes her look like she just stepped off a filmset—but she’s also just…Jones. Maybe there was a time when he thought about her like that, just a little, just fleetingly, because she’s pretty, and smart, and nice, and never treated him like a freak or made him feel unwanted. But even if he’d had any lingering _thoughts_ about her, he’s pretty sure they would’ve been blown out of the water the second he laid eyes on Beth.

Yeah. He’s so screwed.

“Okay,” says Beth, but not like she’s humoring him. She smiles, and it reaches her eyes, crinkling them at the corners. “Was she the girl you were talking to outside of class the other day?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s her.”

“And you said her name was Cathy Jones?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I think we have a couple of classes together. She seems cool. Really smart.”

Travis nods, relieved, because they’re edging back into his comfort zone here. “Oh, yeah. Like, Madame Curie smart. I’m pretty sure she skipped a grade or something back in high school.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me at all.” Beth clasps her hands, long slender fingers braiding together. “So…when did you wanna start?”

Travis does _not_ take that the wrong way. But maybe his downstairs brain does, a little bit.

“Uh, now. Now’s fine.” He scrambles to grab his sketchbook from the low-slung coffee table, holding it out as proof that he really _did_ just invite her over to draw her. “If you’re—if you’re up for it.”

Beth unwinds her fingers and sticks her hands in her pockets. “Sure. Where’d you want me?”

Oh, Christ, this is just getting worse and _worse_. Travis’s brain stalls for a second, but he eventually settles on, “Uh. Couch?”

He almost chokes when he says it, and then has to cover it up with a coughing fit. Beth takes a step closer, obviously concerned, and hovers her hand in midair like she wants to give him the Heimlich or something.

“You okay?” she asks. Her eyes are really wide.

Honestly? Probably not. “Uh-huh. Yeah. Fine.”

Beth looks doubtful, but she drops her hand and sticks it back in her pocket. “The couch, you said?”

Travis wipes his mouth just in case there’s any drool there. He just about hacked up a damn lung; maybe it’s time to start easing off the cigarettes.

“Yeah,” he says, sounding mostly composed, or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. “The light’s good over there. You can watch TV if you want; the remote should be…somewhere.” Probably stuck between one of the cushions. He lifts one of said cushions to check, but then Beth steps up beside him and holds out the clunky remote.

He looks at it. Looks at her. She bites her lip.

“It was in the houseplant,” she explains. 

They have a houseplant? Travis looks at the windowsill, and, yeah, apparently, they do. Fuck if he knows what the hell species it is or where it even came from, though. It’s looking a little worse for the wear, whatever it is. He should probably water it.

“Thanks,” he says, and drops the cushion back into place. He nudges the couch with the side of his foot. “Go ahead and sit down, if you wanna.”

“Shouldn’t I be asking what you want?” Travis stares at her, heat creeping into his cheeks, and she smiles a little and elaborates, “You’re the artist. _You’re_ the one who’s supposed to tell _me_ how to pose, right?”

Once again, Travis silently curses Jones for abandoning him. And, fuck it, _she_ can do the grocery shopping this week, actually. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess. But I, uh. I want you to be comfortable or whatever. That’s important, too.”

Something about Beth’s smile changes, then. It doesn’t get any less sincere or anything, but all of a sudden it looks a lot more…he doesn’t know. Private, maybe. _Intimate_.

God, he wants to kiss her. His hands even jerk like they wanna grab her by the face and haul her in. But he’s not an asshole, he’s not fucking _Derrick_ , and you can’t just go around grabbing girls unless they’ve made it explicitly clear that they _want_ to be grabbed, so he curls his hands into fists and keeps them to his goddamn self.

Beth’s still looking at him like he hung the fucking moon or something. She says, “You’re sweet, Travis,” and he shrugs and looks away. Makes a vague gesture with his sketchbook.

“I’m just gonna…yeah.”

“Okay,” Beth says softly, and even though Travis isn’t looking directly at her anymore—because that’s kind of like looking directly into the sun for too long—he hears the soft _thwump_ of her plopping down on the couch. He retreats into the kitchen and comes back a second later with one of their ladder-backed wooden chairs in tow. He thunks it down beside the TV stand and sits, thumbing through his sketchbook until he finds a fresh page.

He’s gonna draw her in pastels today, the way he wanted to the first time he saw her, and her outfit suits his choice of medium: clean white jeans and a pale blue sweater with a V-neck that shows off her delicate collarbones and the shadow of her cleavage. She’s wearing a gold cross around her neck.

She props one arm on the back of the couch, leans her cheek against her fist, and smiles that private smile at him. Travis’s palms go clammy, and he wonders, again, how the fuck he’s even gonna do this.

He busies himself with sorting through his pastels. “You don’t wanna watch TV?” he asks, trying for casual and totally, completely failing.

She shrugs, and the movement makes her collarbones stand out more prominently against her skin, like flickering bird’s wings. “There even anything good on?”

Well, it is a Saturday, so probably not. Still, he’s getting desperate, so he says, “You never know.”

She shrugs again, pulling both legs onto the couch and tucking them underneath of her. “Maybe I’ll see what’s on later. I’m good for now.”

“You bring a book or something?” Man, he is _officially_ grasping at straws here. “I don’t mind if you read while I—”

“Travis.” Beth’s tone is gentle, like it always is, but it’s also firm enough that he immediately snaps his mouth shut. “Don’t worry about that stuff, okay? If I get bored, I’ll do somethin’ about it.”

“Yeah,” Travis mumbles, and finishes sorting out the pastels he’ll need. “Yeah, okay.”

“It’s nice of you to make sure that I’m not bored,” Beth offers as he starts outlining the shape of her face. “But I wanna watch you draw. It’s interesting to look at.”

Is she saying that she likes to watch people draw in general, or that she likes watching _him_ draw in particular? “Not much to see from over there.”

“Sure there is.” Beth shifts in place a little, then offers a grimace of apology. When he shrugs it off as no big deal, because it isn’t, she goes on, “You get this look on your face like…I dunno. Like everythin’ else just goes away while you draw. I can tell just from watchin’ you that you’re really passionate about what you do.”

Travis stares at her, trying without much success to swallow the lump in his throat. She’s saying all these things he never thought anyone would say to him, like she _gets_ him on a level that no one else ever has, and because he’s a fucking dumbass who doesn’t know how to talk to pretty girls, he doesn’t even know what the fuck to say back to her.

He starts in on her hair as an excuse to look away. “Is there anything that—that you feel that way about?” Because something about the way she talked just now—it sounded like she was speaking from experience.

Beth’s quiet for a minute, then says, “Singin’, I guess. I sang in our church choir back home. And I play the piano too, a little.”

So he was right about her being a singer. He concentrates on getting the swirl of her ponytail just right, and says, kind of absently, “Would you let me hear you sometime?”

“Oh, uh.” She sounds surprised, and when he glances at her face, she _looks_ surprised. Surprised, and shy. “Are you sure? You don’t have to ask just to be polite.”

Travis is pretty sure that he’s never done anything _just to be polite_ in his entire life. He frowns. “I’m not. I wanna hear you sing, Beth. But you don’t—you don’t have to if you don’t want to. Um. Obviously.”

Beth still looks shy, but she’s smiling again, too. “No,” she says. “No, I want to. What kinda music do you like?”

From there, the conversation segues into a compare and contrast of their respective musical tastes—Beth’s is pretty eclectic, and they’ve got a surprising number of artists they like in common. There are others, like the Dixie Chicks, that he wouldn’t’ve ever voluntarily listened to before, but if Beth was the one singing their songs, he thinks he’d probably change his mind.

He hasn’t even heard her sing yet, but he already knows that he’s gonna love her voice.

By the time they’re both ready for a break, he’s even started to relax—as much as he’s capable of relaxing around Beth. He sets his pastels aside and works the cramp out of his fingers, watching Beth furtively as she stretches out her legs and rolls her shoulders. Her sweater slips a little, and she tugs it back into place, but not before he gets a glimpse of her pale yellow bra strap.

Travis gulps. He’s already seen her naked; he doesn’t know why he’s freaking out like this over a goddamn bra.

Beth catches his eye and smiles at him—she doesn’t seem to’ve noticed him ogling her, at least—and nods at the sketchbook in his lap. “Can I see?”

It’s only mostly finished, but Travis nods anyway. He gets out of the uncomfortable kitchen chair and sits down on the couch next to Beth, keeping a respectable amount of distance between them. Or it _was_ a respectable amount, until Beth scoots in close, thigh pressed against his, her sweet-smelling hair sweeping across his shoulder.

Travis all but shoves the sketchbook at her, and then starts gnawing his thumbnail down to the quick as soon as she takes it off his hands. She’s quiet for a long time, and usually Travis tries real hard not to be too needy when it comes to seeking out validation, but the warmth of her against his side is making him feverish, delirious, and his filter just. Malfunctions.

“Is it—do you like—”

“It’s beautiful.” She says it so quietly that he probably wouldn’t’ve heard her at all if she wasn’t sitting so close. She finally looks away from the drawing in her hands and into his eyes, and what he sees in hers stops his breath. “You made me beautiful.”

His filter still isn’t working. It can’t be, because as soon as he gets his breath back, he says, all in a jumbled rush, “That’s ’cause—that’s ’cause you are.” 

He cringes the second the words catch up to him, not because they aren’t true—they’re the truest thing he’s ever said, probably—but because they make him feel desperate and sloppy and a little bit like all of his skin’s been flayed off so he’s nothing but a bunch of raw, exposed nerves. He’s vulnerable as hell and he’s scared as _shit_ that Beth’s smile is gonna flicker and die and that he put too much of himself out there too fucking soon—

And it does flicker. Her smile. It does. But she doesn’t look pained, or put off, or worst of all, _pitying_. The look she had in her eyes when she was marveling over her half-finished portrait is still there, but now it’s _bigger_ , somehow. Too big for one person to hold inside themselves for long without bursting from it.

Beth must think so too—must think she has to do _something_ to let it all out.

And as it so happens, she chooses to _let it all out_ by setting his sketchbook aside and kissing him softly on the lips. 


End file.
